Plans on migrating to use multiformats

[alvin-reyes]

Hello Maintainers,

I'm trying to extend the ipld-explorer-components to add support to explore CAR and I noticed that the following modules are now deprecated.

"cids"
"multibase"
"multicodec"
"multihashes"

It is superseded by the multiformats module: https://www.npmjs.com/package/multiformats.

Question, are there any plans to upgrade? I figured since I'm extending the explorer, I might as well upgrade the module.

Thank you.

[lidel]

🦗 (there are no maintainers nor plans)

@alvin-reyes If you have time to do the refactor and the update, I can help with reviewing and merging.
The main caveat is that this component is used in both https://github.com/ipld/explore.ipld.io and https://github.com/ipfs/ipfs-webui and has to work in both places.

[lidel]

Update:

• feat: introduce ipld car explorer form #313 added https://www.npmjs.com/package/multiformats as dependency but it is only used during CAR import – everything else remains untouched.
• Refactoring old code to use modern multiformats libraries and codecs is something that can be tackled independently, eg. as part of Error: No resolver found for codec "dag-json" (and dag-cbor) ipfs-webui#1923

[rvagg]

Worth noting that this switch is going to introduce problems for the Ethereum and Git examples in the explore since we don't have updated codecs for these. I have a Bitcoin codec that is half-way there (there was an intermeditate @ipld/block that came before multiformats as an experiment in next-gen JS IPLD that it was based on, I haven't quite upgraded it yet, it's a bit complex and has been a very low priority). We could also probably make adapters for the existing codecs if they're important, or perhaps we decide that they are important enough to properly port and just get it done—it's really a matter of prioritisation. Alternatively we ditch the bespoke codecs from the list, and maybe add other interesting examples, maybe even a dag-jose block which is now supported down through go-ipfs and js-ipfs.

[SgtPooki]

I think the first step is defining migration steps. e.g. what are the migration steps for

ipld-explorer-components/src/lib/normalize-dag-node.test.js

Lines 2 to 3 in 16508c1

	import CID from 'cids'
	import normaliseDagCbor from './normalise-dag-node'

and https://github.com/ipfs/ipld-explorer-components/blob/master/src/lib/resolve-ipld-path.test.js#L2-L10 ?

There are a large number of dependents for all of these deprecated packages:

https://www.npmjs.com/browse/depended/cids
https://www.npmjs.com/browse/depended/multibase
https://www.npmjs.com/browse/depended/multicodec
https://www.npmjs.com/browse/depended/multihashes

and each dependent may be using them differently.. we need to dive into it to figure out what we need to support

[lidel]

Last time I looked at normalize- logic + things that changed in JS IPLD libraries made me think the only way to resolve this mess is to remove all legacy libraries and rewrite everything with new js-multiformats.

I suspect old examples may be problematic, but there is no point in having Ethereum / Git examples if nobody can use them, so if we don't have working codecs, we should remove broken examples and replace them with working ones (ipld/explore.ipld.io#74, ipld/explore.ipld.io#62 (comment))

[SgtPooki]

This should be fixed when #359 is resolved